<It all depends on a variety of factors. First, I'll discuss this by faction-standing, then identity. The 5 of Nine are not to be trusted. They are tone-deaf and do things that cause us harm even if it does bring us together. They'll do anything to exist in this world and get the Light. That's why they made those Dark Matter entities out of the Golden-Age-turned-Ascendant-portal-turned-Nine-controlled portal of Cocytus. They hate the Hive and talk to us, and that is supposed to remove them of suspicion? They removed the full will of Orin/Nasya, they control a whole race of humanoid entities who are hurt by Light, and they have the emotional capacity of a child. For all we know, they could be gathering us all together so that they could watch us all, knowing how strong we really are, just in preparation for something else. [quote]W E A S K T O S E E Y O U we chose our emissary because she chose us BUT OUR FIRST ALLIANCE REMAINS OUR MOST TENUOUS Now we turn our eyes to the future. AND… TO YOU.[/quote] Then there's the 4 of Nine. Remember the Invitations of the Nine? If you read the flavor text you got to see some interesting things: [quote]Fools—preoccupied by mortal affairs—when mortals are preoccupied by imagined histories Petty minds + unfit for survival warnings = futile .on the horizon a sch | ism to sunder epochs.[/quote] The 4 of Nine -blam!-ing hate us. We are warned constantly that a Storm is coming, that the End is near, that the falling Veil will kill us all and destroy everything. And yet... we did nothing until we stared our enemy in the face, and they stared back. To them, we're not worthy of living, and so they go and do their own thing their own way. But does that exempt them from being who we really need to stand with? Recluses who we need to draw out of the crevices of existence in order to save us from the 5? Do you remember the grimoire? The one about the Nine, Legends 2? The one that listed 9 different 'theories' on what they were? Did anyone tell you what Joker's Wild and Trials did? It proved that they all exist in some capacity. - Orin spoke to 9 Ghosts, and there are 9 permutations of Ghosts that we see in our first Invitation. - In the Marasenna, 9 colonists that were supposed to be Awoken were missing from the crew. - The Jovian race is confirmed to exist, and they were colonists of the former Jovian colonies. - While deep-orbit Warminds aren't stated to be 'Warminds', one has to remember that the DLC retconned all Warminds other than Rasputin to 'Sub-Minds' like Malahayati. One of the Trials weapons mentions Orin having spoken to the 'deep orbit minds'. - Leviathan intelligences aren't confirmed, especially not those mentioned. This is the only aspect of the Nine mentioned in Legends 2 referring to identity that is unconfirmed. - Xur confirms the "viral language of pure meaning" thing. - Orin confirms the existence of a deep-space signal coming from the direction of the Corona-Borealis supercluster. - The annihilation of a transcendant shape is a little odd, and I want to say that part just means the Nine are ingrained within the universe (which I mean... Dark Matter makes that true), but I can't be certain. - Aspects of Darkness is the 7th thing listed in that card, and now that we know there are factions within the Nine, it is crucial to determine which is which if this is true. The ones in the 'identity' category, after Joker's Wild, seem to be ambassadors or rather vessels for the Nine to inhabit, like some twisted self-aware puppets. That is just going off by what the Ghosts do, however. The other 4 are descriptors, and 2 are left unclaimed, but if the majority are true, then it's right to be suspicious of either side. It's crucial to know whether we are being baited by the 5, or watched with malicious intent by the 4. Unfortunately, not knowing enough about either side leaves determining the culprit of the Red War pointless on this front. Next is identity. Two celestial bodies of significance were "injured" during the Red War, the Sun and Mercury. If it was Mercury, this would make the one injured, and therefore the one responsible, one of the 4. If it was the Sun, then things get more complicated. While the Sun would make the culprit part of the 5, it would also mean the Nine aren't internally consistent. However, since Pluto teeters from being a dwarf planet and an actual planet, and the other planets in the Jovian system are gas giants rather than rock worlds, I'd say that it makes sense if the Sun was one of the Nine. But both beg another question, was the punishment one of intent, or one of circumstance? The 1 of Nine risked everything to learn how to take the Light. Was it punished because it wanted to? If so then this was a crime. Was it punished because it let Ghaul into the system, though not because it wanted to know how to steal the Light? If so then this is likely a punishment of circumstance, a simple "well, don't do that again or you'll [break further or explode]. If it was the Sun, then we need to be wary of the 5 of Nine. It means their intent goes against our own in the end, and they mustn't be dealt with further in the way we're doing it. If it was Mercury, then we need to be wary of the 4 of Nine. It means they well and truly are desperate, and we need to watch what planets we decide to live on, because Earth is one of the Nine, one of the 4... and it's not happy with us.>